Why the heck did they take away the AoE damage fun from Warlocks in 5.5e?
A warlock without Shatter!?!?!??! WHAT?!?!?!?!
Hunger of Hadar is....boring. Can be useful, of course, but where's the UMPH?!?!
I don't really care about not having overlaps in caster options, sometimes you need all the casters to drop AoE spells which don't change the battlefield, but just do massive, raw damage (fireball, lightning bolt, etc). A sorcerer or wizard casting them instead isn't "better" - warlocks not having access to ALL of the possible spells to be cast doesn't make sense, in my opinion, given there are eldritch beings and feylords etc. giving access to the multiverse's spells. If Pact of the Tome allows you to access so many different classes magic, whyyyyyy would there be any gatekeeping for at least Sorcerer & Wizard spells (I can fully see blocking Druid, Paladin, Cleric, Artificer spells, but come on, anything Sorc or Wizard a warlock should have access to given we are essentially "cheating" as a warlock! XD)
No need to even reply to this; I'm just frustrated because I am the only spellcaster besides a cleric in my dnd group and we don't really have AoE to speak of right now and we *desperately* need it for some of these trash mobs in Tomb of Annihilation. Not having at least Shatter is kind of ridiculous! How can a Warlock feasibly *not* have access to it? Makes zero sense.
They decided attacking people is not very warlock, warlocks can only have a few crowd control spells and worthless spells. They had a bad spell list in 2014, they decided they needed to make it far worse in 2024.
Invest everything in Eldritch Blast. It can push you, pull you, pants you, steal your gold, do your taxes, and from half a mile away.
That is what I think is funny about this. They have eldritch blast and ways to enhance it to be a blaster. And then they wont give them any blasting spells. Blasting spells aren't even that great. But given how much they center around blasting via eldritch blast it makes no sense they don't have blasting spells. They should have a dozen unique blasting spells make them all force based so they read like enhancements to eldritch blast. Maybe let eldritch blast invocations add into them as well. And that is not even talking about the countless spells that fit the warlock as good or better than the classes that get them that they don't have access to. Like say bestow curse.
Yeah, not just single target blasting, either. What caster build is good without a big blaster aoe spell you can set off at least once or twice a session. *shakes fist* whatt the hecccck. The fact that Shatter is just no longer a warlock spell is *nuts*. Every Wizard AoE spell should be on the Warlock list. Every single spell from nearly every casting class should be an option (Like Pact of the Tome sort of opens the way to). The limitation is the small number they get and the Pact Slot limitations on how many times per short rest they can do anything more than cantrips. Warlocks hack magic, what's so wrong about them having the access to that?
I don't... fiendlocks get Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, Wall of Fire and Insect Plague. If you want to be a blaster, pick the literal blaster subclass. You also get Synaptic Static, and also, eat my shorts, if you're a blastlock and you think Hunger of Hadar lacks oomph, then you just lack creativity. You mean that I can cast a spell once, then repelling blast all my enemies into the center of a 20-foot-radius sphere that they can't see in and can't escape from, all while it does 6d6 damage to them every turn, and that spell lacks oomph?
All that said, complaining that warlocks are bad blasters is like complaining that it's hard to dribble a football. You get, at most, four spell slots to play with in a fight. If you lob four fireballs, you'll be out of magic, and your party wizard/sorcerer will be lobbing bombs while you're sitting on your hands wondering why you wasted all your spell slots on instantaneous spells. The point of the warlock's spell pool is to provide a variety of concentration-based control abilities and/or magical striker options. An Eldritch Blast build should be looking for creative ways to chain the controlling power of repelling blasts with area effects, and using magic to keep enemies at arm's reach, and a Pact of the Blade build should be using their pact magic to protect themselves while they wade into the fray with smites galore. You can blast with a warlock - that's why the Fiend Patron exists. But that's also why all the Fiend subclass abilities are centered around keeping you alive, because they know you're forgoing all the utility and control spells that a warlock would usually depend on just to lob fireballs into crowds of mobs.
Instantaneous AoE spells were always a trap for Warlocks. That's why they got rid of them.
Yeah hunger of hadar, they will take 4d6 damage when cast as a 5th level spell at the start of their turn and then just walk out of it. And maybe one of them who is like dead center will be close enough they will easily be shoved back in. 20 foot radius and difficult terrain wont hold anyone, it will barely inconvenience them. On the bright side you might motivate them to dash so they lose their action. Not sure that is worth one of your limited slots, but maybe.
But yeah other classes can out blast them, they can also out do them with sustained spells, with utility spells, with buff spells, with pretty much all casting because full casters do that. That does not mean they should not have access at the default class level to blasting spells given they have the blasting cantrip, so blasting is in their M.O.
My thoughts on warlock vs the other "arcane casters" is a tome warlock can have more at will casting than any caster, more ritual spells than a sorcerer and better social capabilities than a wizard. Combat wise though the warlock is a bit more limited than other casters and other martials unless you have a significant number of encounters per "adventuring day"* rather than just 1 or 2. The biggest limiting factor for a warlock is they may very well have one of the worst spell caster spell list in the game and are heavily reliant on having a good patron list to make up for it.
*Adventuring day for the purposes of this post is the time spent between long rests, depending on your game this could be an actual days time an hour in game time or a week depending on how you want to run your short and long rests.
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Crux of the question in the title.
/rant
Why the heck did they take away the AoE damage fun from Warlocks in 5.5e?
A warlock without Shatter!?!?!??! WHAT?!?!?!?!
Hunger of Hadar is....boring. Can be useful, of course, but where's the UMPH?!?!
I don't really care about not having overlaps in caster options, sometimes you need all the casters to drop AoE spells which don't change the battlefield, but just do massive, raw damage (fireball, lightning bolt, etc). A sorcerer or wizard casting them instead isn't "better" - warlocks not having access to ALL of the possible spells to be cast doesn't make sense, in my opinion, given there are eldritch beings and feylords etc. giving access to the multiverse's spells. If Pact of the Tome allows you to access so many different classes magic, whyyyyyy would there be any gatekeeping for at least Sorcerer & Wizard spells (I can fully see blocking Druid, Paladin, Cleric, Artificer spells, but come on, anything Sorc or Wizard a warlock should have access to given we are essentially "cheating" as a warlock! XD)
No need to even reply to this; I'm just frustrated because I am the only spellcaster besides a cleric in my dnd group and we don't really have AoE to speak of right now and we *desperately* need it for some of these trash mobs in Tomb of Annihilation. Not having at least Shatter is kind of ridiculous! How can a Warlock feasibly *not* have access to it? Makes zero sense.
./endrant
They decided attacking people is not very warlock, warlocks can only have a few crowd control spells and worthless spells. They had a bad spell list in 2014, they decided they needed to make it far worse in 2024.
Invest everything in Eldritch Blast. It can push you, pull you, pants you, steal your gold, do your taxes, and from half a mile away.
That is what I think is funny about this. They have eldritch blast and ways to enhance it to be a blaster. And then they wont give them any blasting spells. Blasting spells aren't even that great. But given how much they center around blasting via eldritch blast it makes no sense they don't have blasting spells. They should have a dozen unique blasting spells make them all force based so they read like enhancements to eldritch blast. Maybe let eldritch blast invocations add into them as well. And that is not even talking about the countless spells that fit the warlock as good or better than the classes that get them that they don't have access to. Like say bestow curse.
Yeah, not just single target blasting, either. What caster build is good without a big blaster aoe spell you can set off at least once or twice a session. *shakes fist* whatt the hecccck. The fact that Shatter is just no longer a warlock spell is *nuts*. Every Wizard AoE spell should be on the Warlock list. Every single spell from nearly every casting class should be an option (Like Pact of the Tome sort of opens the way to). The limitation is the small number they get and the Pact Slot limitations on how many times per short rest they can do anything more than cantrips. Warlocks hack magic, what's so wrong about them having the access to that?
I don't... fiendlocks get Burning Hands, Scorching Ray, Fireball, Wall of Fire and Insect Plague. If you want to be a blaster, pick the literal blaster subclass. You also get Synaptic Static, and also, eat my shorts, if you're a blastlock and you think Hunger of Hadar lacks oomph, then you just lack creativity. You mean that I can cast a spell once, then repelling blast all my enemies into the center of a 20-foot-radius sphere that they can't see in and can't escape from, all while it does 6d6 damage to them every turn, and that spell lacks oomph?
All that said, complaining that warlocks are bad blasters is like complaining that it's hard to dribble a football. You get, at most, four spell slots to play with in a fight. If you lob four fireballs, you'll be out of magic, and your party wizard/sorcerer will be lobbing bombs while you're sitting on your hands wondering why you wasted all your spell slots on instantaneous spells. The point of the warlock's spell pool is to provide a variety of concentration-based control abilities and/or magical striker options. An Eldritch Blast build should be looking for creative ways to chain the controlling power of repelling blasts with area effects, and using magic to keep enemies at arm's reach, and a Pact of the Blade build should be using their pact magic to protect themselves while they wade into the fray with smites galore. You can blast with a warlock - that's why the Fiend Patron exists. But that's also why all the Fiend subclass abilities are centered around keeping you alive, because they know you're forgoing all the utility and control spells that a warlock would usually depend on just to lob fireballs into crowds of mobs.
Instantaneous AoE spells were always a trap for Warlocks. That's why they got rid of them.
Yeah hunger of hadar, they will take 4d6 damage when cast as a 5th level spell at the start of their turn and then just walk out of it. And maybe one of them who is like dead center will be close enough they will easily be shoved back in. 20 foot radius and difficult terrain wont hold anyone, it will barely inconvenience them. On the bright side you might motivate them to dash so they lose their action. Not sure that is worth one of your limited slots, but maybe.
But yeah other classes can out blast them, they can also out do them with sustained spells, with utility spells, with buff spells, with pretty much all casting because full casters do that. That does not mean they should not have access at the default class level to blasting spells given they have the blasting cantrip, so blasting is in their M.O.
My thoughts on warlock vs the other "arcane casters" is a tome warlock can have more at will casting than any caster, more ritual spells than a sorcerer and better social capabilities than a wizard. Combat wise though the warlock is a bit more limited than other casters and other martials unless you have a significant number of encounters per "adventuring day"* rather than just 1 or 2. The biggest limiting factor for a warlock is they may very well have one of the worst spell caster spell list in the game and are heavily reliant on having a good patron list to make up for it.
*Adventuring day for the purposes of this post is the time spent between long rests, depending on your game this could be an actual days time an hour in game time or a week depending on how you want to run your short and long rests.